Just a few days ago, Patriarch Kirill, of Moscow and All Russia, made the following comments on confession during a diocesan assembly. “It is unacceptable to make confession a means of inquiry or supervision, psychotherapy, overcoming conflicts or anything else. A priest listening to a confession should at this moment, to put it this way, […]

Antisemitism is beginning to spread around the world. No, I do not mean merely disagreeing with one or another of Israel’s policies. Many of those disagreements are ideological in nature and need to be debated out in a serious manner between the various parties involved. Sadly, in today’s world, those disagreements are not debated seriously […]

Until a man’s earthly life finishes its course, up to the very departure of the soul from the body, the struggle between sin and righteousness continues within him. However, high a spiritual and moral state one might achieve, a gradual or even headlong and deep fall into the abyss of sin is always possible. St. […]

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His […]

“Let books be your dining table, And you shall be full of delights. Let them be your mattress And you shall sleep restful nights” St. Ephrem the Syrian “Scripture brought me to the Gate of Paradise, and the mind stood in wonder as it entered.” St. Ephrem the Syrian St. Ephrem was not simply an […]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to go share at a church founded around people who were in recovery from alcohol and drugs. I abused substances strongly when I was a high school teenager going into 20-year-old, so my story fit into what they were doing. As a modern “hip” evangelical community, they had their tattooed, […]